Upon reading this, you’re probably one of the more than millions of people who staunchly believe that this audio clip is saying either the word “yanny” or the word “laurel.”
If you haven’t heard it yet, take a listen:
The short audio clip has sharply divided the Internet since it was posted on Twitter by Cloe Feldman on Monday. Why would so many people hear something completely different?
Nina Kraus, a neurobiology professor at Northwestern University, says, “It is not at all surprising to me that two different people will take a sound that is admittedly acoustically ambiguous and hear it differently.”
The original recording was actually lifted from a Reddit post, which was re-posted from another user that recorded an audio file from Vocabulary.com. Somewhere along the line, the recording could’ve been distorted and ultimately degraded the quality of the audio.
“The poor quality of the audio, likely re-recorded multiple times, makes it more open to